But that had been before the interminable waste of the Grass War and the long train of young women and men in front of my desk with the trinkets they thought would give them a chance of not becoming food for crows in a field somewhere.

Nancy Fulda is a Hugo and Nebula Nominee, a Phobos Award winner, and a Vera Hinckley Mayhew Award recipient. She is the first (and so far only) female recipient of the Jim Baen Memorial Award. Find more of her work, including her other story in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, at www.nancyfulda.com.